World Cup 2014, Brazil.

FIFA's corruption doesn't imply they would attempt to fix the world's biggest sporting event, and that several of the world's greatest former players (who have nothing really to gain from this) would turn a blind eye.

This scenario is so unlikely that you need to provide much stronger evidence than some garbage about Valcke's hands to be taken remotely seriously.

 

I have no problem with someone opening a ball the same way every time. He found a system that worked smoothly and carried on doing it. There is no facial sign he is doing anything untoward....only a professional magician could pull off switching a piece of paper in view of others whilst maintaining a steady stream of words. I shall stop now because I will say something very rude otherwise.

 

Nobody's saying they've fixed the entire tournament, only the draw which is relatively minor. It doesn't seem to make sense that they're not morally corrupt enough to alter the fixtures of the first round of the tournament, when they have no qualms over being bent enough to make a complete mockery of the 2022 World Cup.

 

Once a level of trust disappears then the conspiracy theorists come out in their thousands. When FIFA had their presidential voting scam unravelled the outcry was enormous. Not just because it was the wrong thing to do but because the same personnel, and those associated with them, could never be trusted again.

The draw table sloped because it presents better to the camera. The set designer, producer, director obviously didn't want the public to see all those little half balls or perhaps a shoot which they disappear down into. Whatever happens, a conspiracy theorist will want to find its weakest link and exploit it, so those responsible are onto a loser from the start. I would suggest that next time, we see the opening, fumbling with, and reading out of names. Of course, then people will wonder why they've employed Penn and Teller to do the presentation.

The draw may have been rigged. Who knows..? Probably the most important thing is that if the element of trust is gone then it might as well have been rigged.

Let's face it, from one perspective it's manipulated anyway. There are seeded teams that can't face each other until later. They separate the continents out so that there is an even spread of associated teams throughout. It all plays into the hands of no real surprises and the best teams having the best chance of becoming world champions.
From another perspective, it's the fair and right thing to do. We end up with there or thereabouts the best team winning the competition.

Like anyone who likes to see an underdog win, I'd love it if a country like Costa Rica became world champions. That would be fun. It isn't going to happen and they made sure of it. But that's about all they did.

 

I wasn't suggesting anyone accusing them of fixing results.

The difference with the host is that it's a vote, not a draw. We all know they will take brown envelopes from anyone who's offering to vote for them, but fixing the draw itself (which is not minor)? That's an extraordinary claim that is being made on the basis of very little (if any) credible evidence.

 

That tweet was pretty creepy and hard to explain.

 

It's not that hard to explain, just tweet all possible permutations, then delete all but the correct guesses.

Why only tweet one group if you know the outcome?

 

There are 512 possible permutations.

 

With some rudimentary programming ability you could write a script to tweet all of them using twitter's API, then delete them all except for the specific ones you want to keep, so that's not really an obstacle.

 

I looked that up earlier. Apparently doing that has a cap of 100 tweets for some technical reason I won't pretend to understand.

 

Actually it's 1000 per day: https://support.twitter.com/articles/15364-twitter-limits-api-updates-and-following

 

Of course the draw was fixed. This is FIFA we're talking about, one of the most corrupt organisations in the frequently dubious history of professional sport. Is it really a coincidence that late qualifiers France were handed one of the easiest groups? Or is anyone naive enough to believe that Platini had nothing to do with that?

 

A coincidence is much more likely than what you're suggesting, and doesn't require any conspiracy theories to explain it. Does anyone have a shred of evidence for these theories?

 

The tweet and the things mentioned in the video are evidence. Whether or not they're good evidence is what's being debated here. Evidence and proof are different things.

 

See, I find it somewhat difficult to buy that they'd then go on to create a group that will see one of Germany/USA/Ronaldo exit early given that those are three massive draws and drivers of their television ratings, or one that could see the Netherlands/Spain exit early, while having others that feature no marquee teams. You also what looks like a potentially murderous schedule for Brazil after the group stage; their run could feature the runner-up of the Spain/Netherlands/Chile group and the runner-up of the England/Italy/Uruguay group before the semis.

They are massively corrupt, but a rigged draw would look quite different, IMO.

 

There isn't really any hard evidence to show that FIFA have fixed the draw. My point is that this organisation is now so lacking in public trust anywhere in the world, that it's almost impossible to believe they've played it straight..

 

As has been demonstrated, the tweet can be explained, and the stuff in the video is nothing more than speculation. It claims to prove that Valcke was manipulating the draw and it doesn't. So I don't consider either of those things evidence of anything except that lots of people are very willing to believe that FIFA would do something like this. That's terribly bad news for FIFA's reputation, but it doesn't prove anything about the draw.

As Carl Sagan used to say "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", not piecemeal conjecture.

 

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/462954/20130430/blatter-havelange-bribes.htm

 

All I'm going to say on it is, if they did fix it, I approve of their selections because it looks like it will be exciting as ****.